1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of wireless transfer mechanisms. Specifically, the present invention relates to methods, systems and computer program products for transferring objects using one of multiple wireless transfer mechanisms without requiring that a user specify a wireless transfer mechanism.
2. Background and Related Art
Computers have revolutionized modem life. Advances in computing technology result in more powerful and portable computing devices such as laptop computers and hand-held computers (also called “personal digital assistants”). In addition, some mobile telephones have computing power and thus may also be considered computing devices. These devices are often collectively referred to as “portable computing devices”.
It is often desirable to connect such portable computing devices with other devices or with a network in order to transfer or receive information. Due to their portable nature, a number of wireless transfer mechanisms are currently employed to provide such connectivity.
One group of transfer mechanisms involves the transfer of information in the Infra-Red or “IR” range of the frequency spectrum. Various standards exist for transferring objects over IR. One standard is called the “IrDA Object Exchange Protocol” (also called “IrOBEX”) published by the INFRARED DATA ASSOCIATIONSM. Conventionally, object exchange occurs over IR by pointing an IR transmitter from the sending device towards an IR receiver of the receiving device.
More recently, a wireless transfer mechanism called BLUETOOTH™ has been introduced. Bluetooth is a specification for using low-power radio to link wireless computing devices over short distances. A Bluetooth compatible computing device can automatically detect the presence of other Bluetooth compatible computing devices in the general proximity. Then, object exchange between those devices is possible also using Bluetooth. Other types of wireless networking exist such as the IEEE 802.11b standard also known as “Wi-Fi”.
Many computing devices may use IR, Bluetooth, other wireless transfer mechanisms or a combination thereof to transfer objects between computing devices. Those computing devices that use both wireless transfer mechanisms conventionally have a user interface for sending objects with IR, and a user interface for sending objects with Bluetooth. Thus, a user must select the wireless transfer mechanism to use when sending an object. However, a user does not often care what wireless transfer mechanism is used to transfer an object from one computing device to another. All that the user often cares about is that the object that the user selected for transfer is indeed transferred.
Accordingly, what is desired are systems, methods and computer program products for transferring objects using one of multiple wireless transfer mechanisms without requiring that the user designate a particular wireless transfer mechanism.